System administrators typically perform procedures, for example, backups and data replication, in order to maintain a storage system. Although the capacity and complexity of storage systems are growing, the opportunity to perform such administrative procedures is decreasing. Accordingly, system administrators face difficulties completing overall administrative procedures without affecting the performance of the system. As a result, system administrators sometimes perform incremental updates.
According to known techniques for performing incremental updates, changes in storage content are obtained at the application level. These known techniques, however, are application specific and do not scale efficiently. Accordingly, these known techniques are not effective and efficient in certain situations. It is generally desirable to be effective and efficient in certain situations.